


Lullaby of the Snakes

by GingerFrenchie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Epic, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Intrigue, M/M, Magic, Original Character(s), Original Universe, Power Play, Problems, Religion, Romance, Violence, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 09:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13901448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerFrenchie/pseuds/GingerFrenchie
Summary: In a world where magic is only a dusty memory, Zhuneng is a country where no one can hold much freedom. In an eternal duel with the other countries surrounding it, nobles fight for power and honor, and a young girl has found her place far from them all. But she must beware, for the world she is about to discover is full of lies and the whistles of snakes.





	Lullaby of the Snakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go, my first original work, first chapter :)
> 
> English is not my first language, please forgive me for the mistakes (I'd be glad to correct any if you point them out) ;)

_**Zhuneng, Pehar, Dunchô** _

 

She looked out the window. The sky was a profound shade of black, dotted with far stars that looked like shattered pieces of a broken mirror swimming in a pool of ink. The third moon was veiled tonight, but the dim light still managed to invade the room through the thick curtains, the obscure light like a whisper. The castle was quiet, only the sound of the balancing pendulum filled the room, crushed like waves against the heavily upholstered walls, like the weak beat of an ill heart.

 

There was little time.

 

Fear caught a strong hold of her guts, and her blood rushed until she felt her heart sing. She breathed in slowly, willed to remain calm and composed. The plan was simple. She was determined,

 

 _I know what I am doing,_ she convinced herself once more.

 

She paced the room, her feet as soft as a the paws of a sly cat gliding in the night. She was ready, she had prepared herself for years. It was the most audacious thing anyone ever did here. The drawer creaked despite her carefulness. She cursed in her head, hoped to not wake any of the somnolent guards in the corridor.

 

Underneath a pile of shiny silks and soft velvets was the book, this book with a cover wrinkled by dust and time that she had stolen from Father's library and studied for months, carefully hidden from any curious eyes. This kind of books had been long forbidden in Zhuneng. If anyone had found it here, it would have been over for her. They tell of tales that belong to another time, a revolved time during which these arts were tolerated.

 

She placed the old heap of crumbly parchments cautiously in her bag, along with her vials. Food, a saber, man's clothes. Everything she would ever need for this trip she had been dreaming about for several years. Every day and every night separating her from this moment had been an intolerable torture. But tonight she was tasting freedom, _finally_.

 

The heavy cloak swished when she placed it on her skinny shoulders, the fabric caressed the ground and followed her like a singing shadow when she walked. She liked the prominent look the it gave her, from a far she could have been mistaken for a shadow or a ghost no one would dare to approach, like in these books written to scare children in their beds. She quickly slipped in her heeled boots, tightened the lacing, and a smile shadowed on her face as she looked at the few inches she had gained in the mirror. She had always hated being so small, she felt invisible and vulnerable. But tonight, her height would be at her advantage, maybe for the first time in her life, if one does not count the time she had sneaked under Ma's bed to hide from Grandmother and her stupid comb when she was five or six.

 

Damn it, she missed old Ma. She always smelled of cooking herbs and soap, and she had been the only funny person to ever live in this place. She had also been the only one who would accept to recount her stories about the time before the imperial dynasty, the stories written in the forbidden books, even if that meant being admonished by Father later on.

 

She brushed the cheerful memories about her great-grandmother aside. There was too little time to daydream.

 

She unrolled the map she had stolen from the commandant's office while he was off to his daily visits at the whorehouses in town. She knew perfectly about the guards' habits. She knew when it was the lazy bearded man's turn to patrol, or when the crooked-nosed man had faulted and drunk during his guard. She was always quiet and hidden in the gloom, she observed. She may have been the only one, if one does not count the mice that wander between the walls nor the spirits, to know how to escape and slip back in her chambers without anyone noticing. One would only need to know where to hide and when to move, and not a single soul but the Mother Goddess above would ever know about their absence.

 

She lazily traced the path she had to take with a finger. Wyan was the goal. Once she would cross the border, she would be safe, safer than she had ever been here. It is said that there are still people like her in the windy lands, who gather in groups and travel together. Number was strength, she knew it. But she could not cross the Mud Bridge in order to reach the southern lands. It was too close from the capital, too well guarded, too unsafe for emigrants. She had to absolutely avoid being discovered and sent to the Deserted Lands like the rest of her kind, or worse, to the Hollow of the Sentenced, where she would receive a worse treatment than slaves in Aulia.

 

A smile formed on her lips as her finger lingered between the lakes of the Second and the Third Daughter. There was a bridge there, yet no maps spoke of it. No official map. An old heap of dusty bricks, crumbly and unsteady, she had learned about it in the old book. There were no hunters there, no soldier to stand in her way. She inhaled deeply. She would need to follow the path heading north, and lose herself in the Forest of a Thousand years. A gust of soft summer wind engulfed itself in the room swallowed in darkness, toyed with a few strands of her free hair.

 

She looked out the small and round window again, at the Maiden's Trees, flowering in the garden underneath her bedroom. The white leaves were streaked with red, like a maiden's sheets, announcing the end of Summer and the arrival of Fall, the time for the maidens to marry, further their mother's name and carry their father's pride. Or at least that was what she had been taught since as long as she could remember. Before they even knew how to walk, zhunengi girls were taught to repeat the words _marriage_ and _family_ and _purity_. It was like an unbearable gong's ring echoing in her head.

 

She had often wondered why zhunengi even bothered teaching girls how to speak and how to walk.

 

Girls never go far, girls never speak much here. Girls marry and further the name they were given at birth, they smile politely at their husband's words and they spend the rest of their lives drinking tea in the company of friend with lives as miserable as theirs. But they do not achieve much else. They could easily be mistaken for part of the furniture in their own house, not even allowed to nurse their own children, a task that is delegated to the husband's mother for the bride is often considered too young and inexperienced to raise proud zhunengi men and proper ladies.

 

The thought that she had one day, even if she was only a girl, dreamed about being one of these women revolted her. But since the first story she heard from Ma's warm and rusty voice, a passion had grown in her, transforming the meek and timid girl into a secretly fierce and ambitious child. She had only been missing that touch of courage, this impulsion to start the better life she had been dreaming of. And it had finally appeared, in a shape impossible to hide or anihilate now.

 

She was different. Deep inside of her, she always knew. But she could not stay here dor one more second.

 

She sat on the edge of the window and looked far away, further than streets, dimly lightened by the paper lanterns, even further that the roofs already mingling with the morning fog. She was facing the night, all fifteen years of her life behind her, shadowing in the bedroom filled with silky white gowns and embroidered tapestries that tell of prettified tales she never listened to.

 

The night, the darkness and the murk, they say it is her race's kingdom, like all that is vile and evil. One day she would come back. She would come back and show them all what the people they call “mistakes in nature” are capable of.

 

But she glanced back before jumping in the obscurity and run after the fate she was choosing for herself. A piece was missing.

 

Her leather boots squeaked as she made her way to the dresser, and the blade of the scissors reflected the silver light of the low moon. Maidens no longer pure trim the hair they let grow since their birth, tie it with a ribbon the color of crismon as an offer to the Mother Goddess.

 

She shivered as she felt the coldness of the blade against her skin, then the fresh air against her now naked neck. She inhaled deeply. This was the first taste of the bold freedom she had always dreamed about.

 

If the tapestries speak the truth, her kin was never pure, just a stain in the perfect nature, a flaw to human kind according to all the zhunengi, she reminded herself as she bound the long ebony strands with a black bow, before depositing it carefully below the embroidered story of how the heroic Emperor had saved these lands from demons like her.

 

She grinned. Not so subtle, but symbolism still. The first person to walk into the room would know the reason of her departure. A guard or a handmaid, most certainly. And guards as well as handmaids gush, the news would travel as quickly as a leaf caught in the wind. Hunters would be sent off immediately, of course. It was as dangerous as it was poetic. But Tora wanted to mark the minds, she wanted to write history, to scream it on every roof. Let them know, all of them.

 

Let them all know the mighty Emperor has fathered a witch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment! <33


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